Tigers will take mistakes, as long as they remain aggressive on basepaths

Baltimore Orioles third baseman Jonathan Schoop tags Detroit Tigers’ Nick Castellanos (9) out, after Castellanos rounded third base too far on a Ian Kinsler RBI single in the second inning of a baseball game in Detroit Friday.
PAUL SANCYA — The Associated Press

DETROIT >> There is an acronym to explain the circumstances the Detroit Tigers have sometimes run themselves into this year:

TOOTBLAN.

It stands for “thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop.”

That may be valuable knowledge, as the Tigers continue to try to transform themselves from a station-to-station team into, as one observer put it, the “Go-Go Tigers.”

So far, the results have been mixed.

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A few heads-up plays, a few extra bases taken, a few TOOTBLANs.

Don’t get it mixed up, though.

The Tigers would prefer to have the latter, as long is the mistakes are made in the spirit of being aggressive.

In that case, be prepared to see more.

It’s not like the Tigers — who openly admitted they were fielding a different sort of team this year, and planned on using that influx of speed — are going to scale back.

They weren’t merely paying lip service to that plan.

“There’s going to be times where players are going to have to be reminded. It’s easy once you get a month into the season to relax and forget what we were trying to do, from the time we were in Lakeland, moving forward,” manager Brad Ausmus said Saturday morning.

“There’s certainly going to be reminders. But I’m certainly not disappointed with how they’ve run the bases, et cetera, so far.”

The Tigers came into Saturday’s game having taken five extra bases so far — or one on 23 percent of their opportunities, below the league average of 39 percent.

Like in the third inning Friday, when Austin Jackson sliced a shot to left field, and tried to stretch a single into a double. He was gunned out by Orioles left fielder David Lough.

“That was actually a good play. Talked about it after the game yesterday. The outfielder was moving away from his throwing arm, the grass was wet, the ball was wet, and he essentially had to make a perfect throw to get Austin out. And he did,” Ausmus said. “That’s going to happen. To me, that was a smart baseball play. Sometimes smart baseball plays don’t work.”

There are other plays, though, with a not-so-pretty result, ones that are not so smart, either. But understandable.

Rookie Nick Castellanos has made a couple of those TOOTBLANs.

He knows that it’s better to make an aggressive mistake than a timid one, and has said as much.

He also knows that the Tigers would prefer that, as well.

Even when the results are like Friday, when the rookie might have run the Tigers out of a bigger inning, missing a very clear stop sign from third base coach Dave Clark and nearly running him over in the process of rounding third, chugging away with his head down.

Castellanos finally realized the situation, tried to retreat to third, only to be tagged out.

“Yeah, he was running hard. He was very aggressive. I told him I loved the approach he took on the bases, just a matter of picking up his head a little earlier. That’s all it was. That’s an easy fix,” Ausmus said, knowing exactly how it feels to be in Castellanos’ shoes.

“He’s gotten some key hits. He’s played hard. His defense has been solid. A couple baserunning gaffes, but we knew that young players make mistakes sometimes.

“I made mistakes. I made the same mistake twice in the span of a week, and Bruce Bochy wanted to strangle me. It’s going to happen.”

In Ausmus’ first full year, he recalled, he was deked out by a veteran third baseman on nearly identical plays.

“I was on second base. We were in San Diego, there was one out. Dribbler to third base. Veteran third baseman Tim Wallach’s playing third base for the Dodgers. I come around third base hard, thinking if something happens, I’ll be able to score. Tim Wallach comes up, pump-fakes, turns around and tags me,” the manager said.

“A week later in L.A. Same play. On second base, came around third base hard, pump-fakes, turns around and tags. ... The chances of those two things happening is slim. In the span of a week, I managed to make the same mistake twice.”

It does happen.

It will happen more.

If it’s not Castellanos, it could be another one of the Tigers’ young players — Tyler Collins, or Andrew Romine or Bryan Holaday.

It could be a veteran — although one of the more likely candidates of previous years, Prince Fielder, who has already run his way into his manager’s bad graces in Texas, is no longer here.

There will be more, don’t doubt that.

More TOOTBLANs and more times — like each of the late rallies in the first two games — when aggressive baserunning pays off.